Rex Stout’s Other Detective Series: Tecumseh Fox

Agatha Christie is highly regarded and remembered more than her individual characters because of the fact that her mysteries were not limited to a single famous detective unlike Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle. She had not only Hercule Poirot, but Miss Marple is almost equally beloved. In addition, other characters such as Parker Pyne and Tommy and Tuppence are well-regarded by mystery fans.

Beyond Agatha Christie, many other mystery writers understood the importance of having more than one detective series going. The point was not lost on Rex Stout. With several Nero Wolfe novels under his belt, Stout tried to branch out with limited success. He wrote one novel featuring lady private eye Dol Bonner and another featuring lawyer Alphabet Hicks. And there were a couple others without a lead detective. None were particularly well-regarded.

One detective did get more than one book-Tecumseh Fox who appeared in three books published between 1939-41. In Tecumseh Fox, Stout had a lot of potential to write a series that departed from Wolfe but still was high quality. In the first book, Double for Death, we’re introduced to Fox. He’s part Native American, he’s resourceful, intelligent, and unlike Wolfe or Bonner, he doesn’t loath the opposite sex. He lives in Westchester County in a country place where he plays host to a variety of eccentrics. He’s not alone in his detective work with an organization behind him including officers in his organization such as a vice-president.

The series had potential to provide another Stoutian detective, with his own unique characterization and background. The setting of his country home seemed to offer rich opportunities to flesh out interesting characters. Sadly, it was not to be.

In Double for Death, like in Dol Bonner’s sole novel, the novel started strong but the life was sucked out of the story by interminable pages of bland questioning of suspects by the official police at a setting that was completely boring. When finally, the murderer was revealed, there was more relief that the affair was over than impression with the intelligence of the solution.

In the next two novels, Stout would ditch most of the distinctive characteristics as Fox would work in New York City away from home and away from any compatriots or Lieutenants. This basically made him just another private detective. But that’s not to say the novels didn’t have features of interest.

Bad for Business may have been the best of the lot as Fox tries to discover who poisoned some candy and killed the owner of the candy company. Indeed, Stout would recycle much of the plot for the Nero Wolfe novella “Bitter End.” The story like the one to follow it The Broken Vase was enjoyable but at the same point, maddening. Both books were good and could have been great if only…

The closest to greatness was when Bad for Business featured Fox trying to solve a case involving one of Dol Bonner’s operatives. Fox and Bonner clashed twice and the story had a feeling of electricity in those moments, but Bonner disappears from the book and the opportunity for greatness passes. Yes, the series had potential but Stout couldn’t bring it to fruition.

The series also exposed and emphasized Stout’s weaknesses as an author. The Wolfe stories all were written from a first person perspective in the memorable voice of Archie Goodwin. It seems as if Stout tried to avoid the first person to prevent the book’s narrator from sounding like Archie. What was used throughout the series was Omniscient narration at its worst: unfocused and uninteresting.

In addition to this, it becomes painfully clear from all of these non-Wolfe novels that Stout was incapable of writing about the romantic relationships in any way that’s not farcical. His romantic angles are strained and his characters’ love affairs are unrealistic and not in a way that appeals to readers.

In the Nero Wolfe book, Stout’s genius is how he negates these deficiencies. Archie Goodwin adds not only flavor to the narrative but focus as well. In the two main protagonists, you have a womanhater and a man whose flirty and flip demeanor towards the opposite sex balances against Stout’s weakness for romance. None of this helped out in the Fox books.

The last Tecumseh Fox book was published in 1941 and then came the War and Stout’s war work limited his output to a precious few Nero Wolfe novellas. The war made people re-calibrate and consider what really mattered, and perhaps War did that for Stout as well. He’d missed writing Nero Wolfe during the war years and when he could, he got right back at it and continued to write Nero Wolfe stories and only Nero Wolfe stories for fiction for the next thirty years. His days of literary flirtation were over.

And readers can be thankful for it. The more time Stout wasted on failed mystery experiments, the less time he had to craft masterful stories like The Silent Speaker, The Golden Spiders, The Next Witness, and The Final Deduction.

If you enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered automatically to your Kindle.

Welcome to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio. We will feature five of Old Time Radio's great detectives from the beginning of the career to the very last episode in existence with a new episode posted Monday-Friday.
In addition, every month, we'll post a public domain movie or TV mystery or detective show as a bonus.
Along the way, I'll provide you my commentary and offer you opportunities to interact. This is going to be fun and exciting. I hope you'll join me for the trip.
If you'd like to join the adventure with all the great shows that are featured as part of our line up, click here to add this podcast to your Itunes, click here to subscribe to this feed using any other feed reader.
If you'd like an even more in-depth experience, get our Iphones App from the Itunes store and get bonus episodes featuring the stars of our shows in non-Detective roles.
You can follow me on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook